Rien Sur Robert review

As the title suggests, this has nothing to do with anybody called Robert. Rather, the key character is Parisian critic Didier Temple, whose world seems to be falling apart.

His girlfriend has left him, everyone is criticising him for an article he wrote about a Bosnian film he's never seen, and he's being followed by a stranger. Finally, an encounter with a weird girl at a dinner party triggers an ever more bizarre chain of events...

Billed as an "intellectual comedy of a man haunted by his relationships", Rien Sur Robert fails to deliver on its initial comic promise. The fault lies with the overly symmetrical and theoretical screenplay. The characters resemble constructs rather than flesh-and-blood creations, preventing much emotional engagement with their plight.